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Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Have you ever wondered what government benefits the fossil fuel industry enjoys? Here is a comprehensive breakdown: Fossil Fuel Subsidies.

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Klassy Evans and Adam Khan, editors of this web site and authors of the book Fill Your Tank With Freedom, would love to talk to your group about fuel competition. Print out this PDF document to bring to your group's program director: Saving Lady Liberty. It prints best if you download the file to your computer and then print it.

Friday, February 1, 2013

I'm reading the book, Salt: A World History.
It's more interesting than you might think. Because the primary method
of preserving food for most of human history was using salt, it was the
most important commodity on earth. Milk was preserved with it as cheese.
Vegetables were preserved by pickling, which required salt. Meat and
fish were preserved with salt. It was vitally important and became more
so as time went on, right up until the Civil War, when other ways of
preserving food became widespread (like canning and eventually
refrigeration).

One of the things that surprised me was
how many times and places in history someone tried (and sometimes
succeeded) gaining a monopoly on salt production or distribution. It was
such a vital commodity that tremendous wealth and power could be gained
from a monopoly of salt.

As other ways of preserving food became available, salt lost its exalted status. Nobody really cares who (if anyone) controls the salt market.

The new vitally important
commodity is transportation fuel. Everybody needs it. And one
fuel dominates. Almost all forms of transportation in the world — 95%
of the trains, planes, ships, cars, trucks — run on petroleum. Other viable fuels are available, but the vehicles themselves are made to only burn one. It is a virtual monopoly.

On top of that, OPEC formed a cartel to illegally control the price of oil.

When a commodity is important enough, someone will always try
to control it, monopolize it or corner the market in one way or
another. The English did it with salt, the French did it, different
cities did it back to ancient times, China did it, the Mayans did it,
the Aztecs did it. Anyone in power wanted to do it or tried to do
it. Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt: A World History, wrote:

The
earliest evidence that has been found of Mayan salt production is dated
at about 1000 B.C., but remains of earlier saltworks have been found in
non-Mayan Mexico such as Oaxaca. It may be an exaggeration to claim
that the great Mayan civilization rose and fell over salt. However, it
rose by controlling salt production and prospered on the ability to
trade salt, flourishing in spite of constant warfare over control of
salt sources. By the time Europeans arrived, the civilization was in a
state of decline, and one of the prime indicators of this was a
breakdown in its salt trade.

The same
kind of thing can be found throughout history all over the world. It
looks like a fact of life: Someone will try to gain and hold a monopoly
on any important commodity. And if we (the people using the commodity)
don't want to be the victims of a monopoly, it is up to us to stop it. But how?

Kurlansky
wrote, "The Aztecs controlled the salt routes by military power and
were able to deny their enemies, such as Tlxalacaltecas, access to
salt." Before Europeans discovered America, a tribe in central America — the Tlatoque — refused to participate in the Aztecs salt monopoly. They deliberately avoided using salt.

Kurlansky
wrote, "The Spanish took power by taking over the saltworks of the
indigenous people they conquered. Cortes, who came from southern Spain,
not far from both Spanish and Portuguese saltworks, understood the power
and politics of salt. He observed with admiration how the Tlatoque had
maintained their independence and avoided the oppression of the Aztecs
by abstaining from salt."

We may not be able to abstain from oil, but as Korin and Luft argue in their book, Turning Oil Into Salt, we can certainly add enough competition to break the monopoly and strip oil of its strategic status and thus make the OPEC cartel no longer capable of controlling the price of transportation fuel.

We
can become free of oil's monopoly by expanding fuel competition until
oil is only one of many viable fuels used by combustion engines, just as salt is now only one of many ways to keep food from spoiling. Fuel
competition can free us from the monopoly and its economy-smothering,
national security-weakening, pocket-emptying effects. Do you want to see
this happen? Start here.